Tag Archives: Deauville

The 34th Deauville American Film Festival closed yesterday with The Visitor, actor Tom McCarthy’s second film as a writer/director after the well-regarded The Station Agent, winning the top prize.

Also a big winner, Ballast garnered the Jury Prize and the Cartier Foundation Prize. It marks the first feature for art designer Lance Hammer (The Man Who Wasn’t There), who was also awarded directing prizes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and Durban International Film Festival.

Rounding up the winners are the apparently borderline unwatchable Gardens Of The Night from director Damian Harris (Deceived) with the Critics’ Prize and the war drama Johnny Mad Dog from Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (Carlitos Medellin) with the Michel D’Ornano Prize

While discussing her well-received Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired at the Deauville American Film Festival, American documentarian Marina Zenovich declared her wish to make a film about current French President Nicolas Sarkozy, saying she found the way he’s trying to change France very interesting, and that there was of course the “soap opera of his love life”.

For those of you not in the know, Sarkozy was first married in 1986, to a wife who bore his two eldest sons. Two years before, as mayor, he officiated at the wedding of the woman who would go on to become his second wife, Cécilia. Cécilia left her husband for Sarkozy in 1988, who divorced his first wife in 1996 and married her the same year. The couple seperated briefly years later in 2005, and for good soon aftre Sarkozy started his presidency last year. Of course, earlier this year, Sarkozy married the Italian former model/current singer Carla Bruni, a rather loose bombshell who’s been with everyone from Mick Jagger to Donald Trump.